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It’s fairly common for ex-WWE wrestlers to reinvent themselves on the independent scene – but how many have done it at age 50, two decades after wrestling their last match on WWE TV? In 2018, Pierre-Carl Ouellet has done just that – and so much more.
The man formerly known as Pierre the Quebecer and Jean-Pierre Lafitte – and now known simply as PCO – has suddenly become the talk of the indies and one of the hottest acts in all of wrestling.
“It’s been my greatest run ever in the pro wrestling business,” PCO said during an exclusive interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch. “This is the best. This year has been really, really intense. It’s organic. It’s been a crazy run, and it’s also the run where I’m having the most fun and I enjoy the most.”
Ouellet made his pro wrestling debut an astounding 30-plus years ago, when Hulkamania was the hottest thing going and territories like the AWA and Jim Crockett Promotions were still in business. He achieved his greatest fame in the U.S. in 1993 and 1994 as one-half of the Quebecers with Jacques Rougeau, winning the WWF Tag Team Championship on three occasions. He was repackaged as the nefarious pirate Jean-Pierre Lafitte in 1995, but left after running afoul of the Kliq.
Ouellet had additional stints in WCW, the WWF and ECW throughout the 1990s and into 2000, and was later repackaged as the masked X in TNA in 2003. Though he wasn’t often seen in the U.S. after that, continued to wrestle in his native Canada over the next 15 years, with the occasional hiatus here and there.
And then, early in 2018, everything changed.
Ouellet was announced as the opponent for independent standout Walter during Joey Janela’s Spring Break 2 in New Orleans over WrestleMania weekend. The two men engaged in a brutal, hard hitting match that saw Ouellet emerge victorious. The match went viral, as did photos of Ouellet’s bruised and beaten chest. Almost instantly, the independent wrestling scene had a new star on its hands. But this wasn’t Pierre the Quebecer, Jean-Pierre Laffite or even Pierre-Carl Ouellet. This was PCO.
“A lot of clips are resurfacing of things I did in the past,” PCO said. “I felt like at the time it was all done for nothing, but it all means something in 2018. They all add to that strange character. The old clips from WWE, TNA, WCW, ECW, they all add something to PCO in 2018.”
The Resurrection of PCO
At age 50, most wrestlers are working the autograph circuit as the characters that made them famous. But PCO didn’t want to go that route, in part because he didn’t feel like Pierre or Laffite were characters that the audience could connect with.
“I didn’t like any of the other characters,” he said. “They weren’t me, or the timing wasn’t right. It’s all about timing. One character that could have worked was Jean-Pierre Lafitte. But I didn’t like it because it was changing my name to another name, and that confuses people sometimes – different gimmicks, different names. Sometimes it’s best to keep it simple. Why make it complicated?
“So I decided to go with PCO. It’s easy to pronounce and it doesn’t change anything about me. It’s been PCO now for the last 10, 15 years.”
But it wasn’t a change in name alone. Fans began talking about the resurrection of Pierre-Carl Ouellet and his ability to absorb punishment. He’s not human, many of them said online.
The reaction from fans online helped give birth to a whole new PCO.
“Everybody started to talk about the resurrection and everything and I wasn’t human and things like that,” PCO said. “It was a process where the fans were giving me the answers, and I was just answering back to them with the videos.”
Oh yes, the videos.
A big part of PCO’s newfound stardom is the bizarre videos that have accompanied his return. In the videos, a Dr. Frankenstein-esque mad scientist named D. Destro digs up PCO from the grave, and brings him back to life with a nail in the nose, some electrical shocks and a beaker full of blood. The videos then show the seemingly inhuman PCO training and performing feats of strength as Destro screams instructions.
“It is who I am as a character,” he said of the PCO character. “As far as not being human, I’m really, really tough on myself to endure pain mentally and physically. It’s something that really taps into me, who I really am as a person. But of course it’s exaggerated; it’s a little more than who I am.
“But this character is what my story’s all about. It’s all my years of pain and endurance and resilience and all the setbacks, all the failures, all the big slaps in the face that I got from the business, that I got from life, and it’s me keeping on fighting back and keeping on getting up. Sometimes after being down for a long time on the floor, it wasn’t always easy to get up and fight back, but I always did. This character really translates my whole life, my whole past.”
In Wrestling, “More is More”
Many of PCO’s 1990s contemporaries who still work the independents aren’t out taking bumps, and quite often tell today’s younger wrestlers to slow things down. But that’s not PCO’s style.
“I don’t want to tell the wrestlers that I’m working with that less is more,” PCO said. “More is more. It’s just the evolution of the business. Before a move like a package piledriver was so devastating, that could be a finish in itself. But now it could be like a setup move for another move and a finish. Now we’re at a point where we’re adding three or four strong moves that are going to lead up to the finish. It’s almost like the guy is going to get up from each one of them just to make the match more spectacular. It’s just a different psychology now; the heart of the business will always stay the same, but we need to evolve.”
PCO’s style was always somewhat ahead of its time, including flips from the top rope and dives out of the ring. When TNA was pushing its X Division as not about weight limits, but no limits, PCO was brought in as the masked X to do the same moves that men 100 pounds lighter than him were doing.
“PCO was ahead of his time in the 90s, when you saw this 300 pound beast doing cutting edge moves that no one his size was doing,” said Major League Wrestling CEO Court Bauer. “How do promoters for two decades sleep on someone that speaks two languages, is an ex-WWE tag team champion, works hard and can still go?”
In the years since his WWF and WCW runs, PCO has added moves and psychology to his repertoire that are what people expect to see in independent wrestling matches.
“It feels like the generation I’m wrestling in now is my generation,” he said. “When I was wrestling in the generation before, maybe I wasn’t in the right place at the right time.”
PCO has also extensively studied karate, Brazilian jiu jitsu and other martial arts. Much like independent standouts Matt Riddle, Jeff Cobb and “Filthy” Tom Lawlor, PCO works MMA-type strikes and grappling into his matches.
“It put me in a different spirit to create some matches, to add some reality to the creation of a match and put a match together differently than 20 years ago,” PCO said. “I think now we can bring some more realistic elements to a wrestling match. That helped sharpen my craft as a wrestler in 2018.”
At age 50, PCO is more committed to his craft now than ever before. He said it is very important to show companies and promoters that are interested in him that he is worth the investment. He doesn’t cut corners, and he’s very disciplined and focused on his career.
“If any good looking girl walked up to me at a restaurant and would say to me, ‘Do you want to have fun tonight, party at my house, bring some friends,’ and I knew I had a training or workout at 6:30 in the morning, I wouldn’t want to go because my training would be more important than going out with a beautiful girl – not that I don’t like them,” PCO said with a laugh. “When you become popular and you get fame and money, you kind of lose track of your goal. All those little traps that are around the celebrity, you can fall for each and every one of them. There’s always someone saying, ‘Come on, it’s just a beer, it’s just a drink,’ but just a little bit of this and a little bit of that can become a big something at the end of the year.”
BOLA, Battle Riot and Beyond
PCO’s hard-hitting style, commitment to wrestling and growing fan base have provided him with some real opportunities in 2018. He has worked with a virtual who’s who in independent wrestling in 2018, including Walter, Joey Janela, Darby Allin, Teddy Hart, Ethan Page, Eddie Kingston, Josh Alexander, Chris Dickinson, “Speedball” Mike Bailey and others, and he has a big match coming up with Matt Riddle on Aug. 17 Joey Janela’s Lost in New York, presented by Game Changer Wrestling. He keeps a list of independents stars he would like to work with, including Brian Cage, Sami Callihan, Jeff Cobb, Zack Sabre Jr. and Will Ospreay.
“It’s truly an amazing ride,” said Randy Carver of Maine-based Limitless Wrestling. “Here’s a guy who wasn’t wrestling for quite a period of time, and even when he was, it was on smaller events in Canada. All the sudden, he comes out of nowhere with these insane videos, exciting matches, and just connects. It’s tough for anyone to really connect today. It’s something people spend a lot of time trying to figure out. PCO gets it, and he’s riding this wave all the way.”
In June, PCO was the first wrestler announced for Pro Wrestling Guerilla’s Battle of Los Angeles this September, arguably the top event in all of independent wrestling. BOLA has helped launched the careers of some of wrestling’s top stars, including Kenny Omega, Ricochet, Kyle O’Reilly, Adam Cole, Joey Ryan and Marty Scurll. This year’s BOLA tournament will include 24 standouts from all over the world, including Riddle, Walter, Janela, Adam Brooks, Brody King, Travis Banks and Ilja Dragunov. 
“It’s a chance for me to show everything that I can do,” PCO said. “Everybody’s got their own style, but I think I can mix it up with everyone and do all of the craziness that people will expect. I’m just so pumped to impress everybody out there. I think this is going to be a great window for me to show how ready I am and how great of condition mentally and physically that I am.”
He’s also scheduled to compete in Major League Wrestling’s Battle Riot in New York on July 19. Battle Riot is a 40-man match that will include a mix of top MLW stars and legends, including Callihan, John Morrison, Jake Hager, Pentagon Jr., Konnan, Kevin Sullivan, Swoggle and more.
“PCO’s chaotic, hard-hitting style and legitimate danger factor is immensely appealing to me as the promoter of a match where 40 guys are going to fight in a Battle Riot where there’s no DQs,” Bauer said. “He’s danger personified. He fits this match like a glove.”
PCO also hinted that sometime soon, fans might see the first live appearance of D. Destro, the madman with the slimy black tongue in his videos.
“Everybody wants to see him,” PCO said.” They’ve seen him in the videos, but if you only see videos, you cannot really understand everything that he adds to the whole atmosphere, the whole character. But when they see him perform for just a minute or two minutes or three minutes, people will see how huge of a character he is. I’m really looking forward to having him show up unexpected on any night. Maybe he’ll be there, maybe he won’t be there, but when he is, hell is gonna break loose.”
PCO is also hoping to return to WWE one day. There are several wrestlers on the WWE roster he would love to wrestle, including Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Undertaker, Finn Balor, John Cena and Kevin Owens. But mostly, he said, “I’m more interested in finding the guy who is the perfect fit for me, or being that perfect fit for someone else.”
PCO was blown away by Matt and Jeff Hardy’s surprise return at WrestleMania 33, and would love to make that sort of return himself.
“It was such a surprise,” he said. “There were people who knew or thought it might happen, but it caught everybody off guard. It was a hell of a move for WWE and probably the best moment of the whole night.”
Until WWE comes calling, PCO will undoubtedly continue to be a standout on independent wrestling shows, doing things at age 50 and beyond that no one has ever done before.
“I think PCO’s rise in independent wrestling shows that really anything is possible in professional wrestling, period,” Carver said. “Two years ago, the world of wrestling wouldn’t have thought of talking about PCO as a prominent independent star. Now? He’s one of the most booked guys around. There’s a lot of recent success stories like this – Teddy Hart, for example. Wrestling is so cool right now, and truly anything is possible.”
PCO encourages fans to follow him on Twitter @PCOQuebecer, where he regularly interacts with fans and posts new training videos.
PWTorch Collectibles Specialist Michael Moore is a Wyoming-based writer whose work has appeared in publications such as Pro Wrestling Illustrated, Beckett sports publications, Tuff Stuff and other magazines. He has contributed collectibles columns to PWTorch.com on a weekly basis since January 2011. Follow him on Twitter @MMooreWriter, or email him at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com.
PCO BOLA trading card image courtesy of Brian Ubben. Follow him on Twitter @briandabrain to see more images from his 2018 BOLA trading card series.
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